


The Small Mercies of Knowing a Bastard

by saunatonttu



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Accidentally Adopting a Werefolf Kid, Alternate Universe, Grief, Humor, M/M, Sharing a Castle with an Insufferable Bastard, canon typical cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 20:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19449199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saunatonttu/pseuds/saunatonttu
Summary: He had laughed when the werewolf had clung to Alucard's long hair and clawed, but he hadn't foreseen how fond they both would grow of the child and of each other they would become.(Or perhaps the fondness was always there.)





	The Small Mercies of Knowing a Bastard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rayfelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/gifts).



> Things to note: The setting is vague on purpose, but it is definitely an alternate universe. Mostly because they're castlemates (oh my god they were castlemates), but also because vampires don't perish in the sunlight. Instead they get an embarrassing rash and a violent case of seasickness on land, because I live for embarrassing vampires.
> 
> I wrote this for a dear friend of mine, you know who you are because I gifted this to you, and I hope you're as entertained as your presence makes me on a daily basis.

The decision to move in with the vampiric bastard had been easy, despite said bastard’s initial reluctance and cautiousness regarding the matter. For Trevor, it wasn’t just because he didn’t have anywhere to go after he’d been kicked out from the town with almost literal pitchforks, though that certainly played for about 75% in the decision.

The rest 25, though… well, he liked him. Not because they had the softest relationships, but because neither allowed the other to wallow in their own deep shitholes of angst. And Trevor had gained a fraction of self-awareness along the way, so he knew Alucard was kind of… good for him, in a way.

 _Two manchildren don’t equal an adult,_ Sypha had told him with a tone as dry as the vodka Trevor had been drinking.

But she had been overall supportive of the decision.

“Maybe now you’ll stop skirting around each other like teenagers,” she had said with the air of someone unwilling to deal with bullshit. If she _wasn’t_ like that, maybe Trevor’s life would be much poorer and lacking in her presence. Not that he was _as_ helpless as she suggested. 

For Alucard, the decision had been a little harder to make, but he agreed in the end. Not because of loneliness – Alucard fervently denied suffering from that – but because giving amnesty to animals was the charitable thing to do. Trevor had been _so_ close to throwing hands with the shithead. He would have if Sypha hadn’t cleared her throat and given one of her patented judgmental looks at the two of them.

Even so, the hollow look that had haunted Alucard’s expression shifted away at the prospect of having someone to live with once again. Pretend as he might, he hadn’t really been the same since his father had passed away. Which was just a euphemism for “a vampire hunter skewered him and lifted the burden of existence from his sunken shoulders”.

“He had it coming,” Alucard had said, lips tight and nostrils flaring as if he were containing some feeling that Sypha and Trevor absolutely weren’t allowed to witness.

Because he was pretty good at it, Trevor pretended he didn’t see any of that.

And that was how his cohabitation with the vampire came to be. Not the most conventional living situation, but at this point Trevor didn’t even have a clue what conventional situation meant. He had been kicked off from the family pretty early on, and from there on he hadn’t really… had a roof over his head.

Things were going to get weird for the two of them, Trevor figured, but he wasn’t gonna back off.

*

Alucard’s castle was, for a lack of better words, as huge as the hugest shit a giant could produce.

“Don’t be crude,” Alucard scoffed at him when Trevor vocalized his thoughts. The heels of his boots clicked hard against the stone floor as he showed Trevor around. “Is it impossible to teach you manners at your age, I wonder.”

“Hey now,” Trevor said as he took in the swirling staircases and paintings lined up on the walls, “nothing wrong with being straightforward, is there? You’re the one that’s too mysterious about your thoughts and stuff, Alucard.”

If it weren’t the paintings, then at least the dust in the corners spoke heavily of the long history and abandonment of the castle. Alucard hadn’t lived there in a while until after Dracula’s death; it was clear that a lot of work still remained in tidying the place up. And, perhaps, that Alucard didn’t have the energy to do it himself.

“You, on the other hand, have no filter whatsoever,” Alucard said, not unlike a bristling cat as he threw a narrow-eyed glare at Trevor. “It really makes me wonder why I agreed to this.”

 _Because you’re lonely as hell_ Trevor wanted to say, but – contrasting Alucard’s assessment of him – left the words unsaid and focused on taking in the surroundings as he climbed up the stairs with Alucard. He suspected that, by the end of this tour, he would have a pair of horribly sore feet, and so he sighed under his breath.

He hoped he’d manage to snag a room close to the dining hall.

*

The thing was… Living with Alucard wasn’t _easy_ , and Trevor had kind of expected that. It wasn’t difficult in the sense that Alucard was bitchy – oh, he was, but that kind of bitchy Trevor could handle – but rather because of what happened more often than Alucard would ever admit to anyone, even himself.

He had this tendency to brood and withdraw from any and all social interaction at times, and it didn’t make him the easiest housemate… er, castlemate? to live with.

Grief, Trevor saw, was Alucard’s already existing guest that had overstayed its welcome but refused to leave the vampire castle nevertheless. Sometimes Trevor would find Alucard wandering in the halls like a lost ghost, pale hand pressed against the wall as he walked. He didn’t seem to notice Trevor’s presence these times if Trevor didn’t make himself known, and even then it was difficult to get Alucard’s complete, undivided attention.

Sypha had always said Trevor was pretty damn impossible to ignore but Alucard managed even the impossible, it seemed. Maybe it was the _supernatural_ part of him.

Trevor tried getting Alucard to drink with him, but it was not to be. Alucard only gave him a miffed look and a condescending appraisal of the cheap beer. Trevor ended up having way too much beer for himself and spending the next day wasted in an out-of-date bathroom that Alucard ought to upgrade to modern one.

Classy vampire aesthetics probably wouldn’t allow it, though.

*

When things were at their worst, something swooped in and changed the game up. Much like Sypha had for Trevor, weirdly enough, along with Alucard. These miracles didn’t come gloriously, they certainly weren’t wished for at the time, but they changed lives regardless. Trevor might appreciate them now. Just a little, and not to their faces.

This little furry miracle stumbled into their lives a little past midnight on the night of a full moon, because life-changing events tended to pick the light of the moon over the glaring heat of the sun – at least in Alucard’s life, for self-explanatory reasons.

They were out on a walk, and it could have been kind of romantic if they had been any other people besides themselves. As things were, the shimmering, translucent light from the moon went wasted on them as they stomped through the forest path – or, in Alucard’s case, walked so soundlessly that Trevor might have thought he was alone if he hadn’t seen Alucard’s golden hair glow under the moonlight by his side.

Why he had bothered to follow Alucard to begin with, now that Trevor wasn’t able to explain. Maybe he’d felt that leaving the vampire wandering alone outside was even more stupid than the shit Trevor usually got himself into. Maybe he felt… bad for Alucard. It could be anything, but the reality was that he followed Alucard out either way and relished in the chill air of early summer night.

It wasn’t as quiet as it was inside the castle: owls were hooting, foliage shuffling under paws and feet, and distant noise came booming through the dark from the closest town. It wasn’t the type of night life Trevor was used to, but it had its good sides to it. The peace of mind he had rarely experienced being one of them.

The miracle happened a little past midnight, and it quite literally crashed onto Alucard from above. One moment the vampire was minding his business and observing the nighttime flowers, and the next he was struggling to get what at first resembled a large wolf cub off his neck and hair, the vampire and the creature both hissing as the struggle went on.

Trevor would have rushed in to help, if the whole situation didn’t look so _comical_. The cub wasn’t going to be able to seriously harm the vampire in any way, yet Alucard struggled and hissed, as affronted as he could possibly be. Probably because the little creature was ruining his well-cared for hair.

“Are you _planning_ on helping me in this century, Belmont?” Alucard’s voice cracked when the small monster scratched at him. “Devilish little son of a—”

“Nah, this is much too entertaining,” Trevor said as he made a show of putting his hands into his pants’ pockets. It was like watching two toddlers trying to wrestle: relatively harmless unless there was a cliff nearby. “Vampire versus baby wolf. Place your bets.”

It was like watching a bar fight while staying out of it yourself, not that Trevor had managed to pull that feat often. He would have smiled if he hadn’t been so sure Alucard would catch it with his penetrating vampire gaze.

“Alright, alright,” he said and went to pick off the cub from Alucard’s neck. Surprising jumping power the little thing had, though it didn’t even rank his top 50 of strange things he’d ever witnessed. The furry creature, which he had first assumed to be a wolf cub, struggled against his hold but didn’t escape as Trevor held it from the back of its neck and hung it in the air before him as if presenting it to Alucard. “There you go, kid.”

“I am _older_ than you.” Trevor couldn’t see his face clearly, but Alucard’s voice sounded much like a brewing storm. Trevor, ever the masochist, grinned.

“In human years, maybe, but when it comes to vampire years—”

Alucard’s heavy, irritated exhale silenced Trevor, but didn’t banish the shit-eating grin from his face. He couldn’t tell what expression the vampire wore now, but at least the vampire could see his.

“The same as ever,” Alucard deadpanned, an old weariness leaking into his voice that he couldn’t or didn’t bother to mask away. “Why did I allow you into my abode, again?”

“My charm at work, I’d say.” Trevor winked at him for good measure, and this time Alucard let out a strangled, laugh-like sound. The little beast Trevor held up began to struggle again at the noise, growls and other irritated noises breaking through the other nightly sounds.

Alucard sighed. “A werewolf. Just what we needed.”

Trevor’s eyes trailed to the full moon hovering over them on a cloudless sky littered with tiny blinking lights. “Should we take it back to the castle? Doesn’t seem like _that_ ’s gonna change anytime soon.”

Alucard’s silence spoke more than words could, and Trevor sighed. “Now’s not the time to get all prejudiced, bastard.”

They did take the little monster back to Alucard’s castle. The windows were still covered with curtains from Alucard’s day sleep, so moonlight didn’t filter inside. As Trevor had hoped, the werewolf turned… less werewolfy when its access to the rain of moonlight got cut off. The hair retreated back into dirt-covered skin, and tangled brown hair fell down to the child’s shoulders, where tattered remains of a shirt remained. The child blinked blearily at them, big matching brown eyes exhausted but widening when they landed on Alucard and the fangs protruding from his mouth.

But instead of shrieking like any normal child was expected to, this one only gawked before mumbling, “ _Cool._ ”

Alucard only scowled while Trevor chuckled.

Not an hour later, the child fell asleep in Alucard’s pearly white bathtub, and the rest of the night became much easier to handle.

*

The child was a girl named Mary, they found out the following day when she enjoyed breakfast with them. They had sort of figured the _girl_ part of the equation out last night, but the name was new and welcome information.

But… there was, of course, a problem.

“I don’t have parents,” Mary said, not too bothered about it and even smiling up at Trevor and Alucard from her side of the table. It was, Trevor and Alucard both agreed later, _creepy_. Her being dressed up in Alucard’s old child-sized clothes didn’t make it any less son. She didn’t seem to notice their confusion as she continued eating and talking. “They died some time ago, and no one wanted me in their house.”

Her lips curled into a pout, and this time a flash of sadness did cross her eyes. It was gone as soon as it had appeared, though. “Said I was too messy, or something like that. I just like playing around in the mud, but adults are super boring…”

Her voice was stubborn, strangely strong for a child of what appeared to be eleven years. Not entirely different from how he used to be in the distant past, Trevor thought and shifted uncomfortably on his seat as he tried to not recall his own childhood days. There’d been some good days, but some admittedly worse and gloomier than he liked to remember.

Looking at this kid, a sturdy girl with calloused fingers and a stubborn face, kind of reminded him—

Alucard stood against the wall at the dining hall’s entrance, pretended disinterest on his face but his attention on Trevor and the kid nevertheless. Trevor would have snorted and made fun of him for that if he weren’t so busy mulling over the child.

He wasn’t the heroic type, or even capable of empathy that much, but there was something here that made him unable to look away and ignore like he might have done in some other situation to some other people.

(“It’s not that you lack empathy,” Sypha had once told him, “it’s just that you actively refuse to use it. Or, hell, even sympathy.”)

And, well, maybe _some_ part of him just wanted to fuck with Alucard a little bit, seeing how bristly the presence of a young werewolf had made the vampire.

“Hey, kid,” he said, twirling his own spoon around in the plateful of porridge he had for a breakfast, “wanna stick around with us for a bit? You don’t seem like you have anywhere else to go at the moment. Right?”

Mary blinked her wide eyes at him a few times uncomprehendingly before her mouth widened into a teeth-revealing grin. She was missing some of them, but it only made the smile more charming in Trevor’s eyes, not that he’d say such a thing out loud. He didn’t like kids _that_ much.

“Belmont,” Alucard piped in over Mary’s cheeriness. “I don’t recall telling you to invite just anyone in to live with us.”

“I don’t recall you saying I _couldn’t_ ,” Trevor shot back, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch at Alucard’s petulant tone. The mood swings this vampire had were surreally fast at times, and a little bit amusing. Now it was kind of relieving to see Alucard express something else than profound disinterest and indifference bordering on melancholy.

Alucard’s stare was piercing even over the distance from the dining room entrance to the table Trevor sat with Mary at, and Trevor’s skin prickled from the sheer force of it. Trevor licked at his upper lip nervously but didn’t back down and kept the eye contact with the vampire. “You gonna argue about this? Get your ass over here then.”

Alucard sighed, but the sound went unheard under Mary’s voice as she kept asking Trevor questions about the castle and telling him how she remembered some villagers calling the castle a cursed abode, which brought a wider smirk to Trevor’s lips.

It wasn’t the worst thing imaginable to do something nice for someone in need, really.

*

Mary was indeed an 11-year-old girl that had been living near the local village some miles away from the Dracula Castle, as Alucard’s home was widely called. After a short-lived imvestigation, they found out that her parents really were dead, and the kid hadn’t simply run out on them like Alucard had suspected at first.

She had come along for the investigation, as Alucard refused to leave her in the castle by herself (“She might ruin something invaluable,” he had said), but was now half-sleeping on Trevor’s back as he gave her a piggyback ride, awake enough to hold onto him but not awake enough to follow the two men’s conversation.

“Still opposed to letting her stay with us?” Trevor was just asking Alucard as he stepped over a stray twig on the path towards the castle. The woods weren’t as thick as one might have expected, mostly due to humans cutting down trees for their woodwork and housing.

“She’s got no place to stay at,” Trevor continued, as if that should matter in Alucard’s decision-making. It _should_ , in his opinion, though Trevor was just as terrible at taking care of anyone, including himself, as Alucard was at speaking of his emotions. Not that Trevor wasn’t exactly like him when it came to the topics he wished to avoid thinking of, too. Like his family. Guess he had that much in common with the vampiric bastard, after all.

But unlike Alucard, Trevor was at peace with that crap. It wasn’t him that was wallowing in grief and pushing others away from seeing the truth, not this time.

“I am well aware,” Alucard said, his voice drawling over each syllable as though he was deep in contemplation. His skin looked even paler and sicker under the light of day, despite the sunlight not actually meeting his skin through the light canvas of the parasol held up by his nimble fingers. The lack of sleep showed in the purple rings beneath Alucard’s eyes, which were now clouded and lacking in the usual clarity and sharpness.

Trevor was only mildly sorry he had dragged the vampire along with him. But since the sun wasn’t exactly life-threatening to Alucard despite the rumors of vampires’ weaknesses, his sorry-ness remained only mild. And he wouldn’t feel sorry at all if Alucard earned himself a nasty rash.

“Sooooo…?” Trevor dragged the word on in the exaggeratedly lazy manner that he knew infuriated Alucard beneath the stoic façade.

Alucard sighed, the sound long and exasperated and a little wheezing as if the vampire was suffering from an acute case of asthma. “I am not so heartless as to leave a child without shelter,” he managed through gritted teeth, “even if she’s one of those mutts.”

Trevor had never quite got the whole feud between vampires and werewolves – or rather, the specific feud between werewolves and Dracula’s family – but Alucard’s response made him snort aloud nevertheless, which jostled the child clinging to his back.

“Mmh… Treeev…” Mary whined, her voice sleepy and her nails digging into Trevor’s shoulders hard enough to sting.

“Ow, ow! Shoulda cut your nails before coming out…”

“Nnnoooo,” Mary groaned. “I like them long…”

“Listen, little miss,” Trevor huffed, “I like having a neck.”

A choked laughter from Alucard’s direction attracted Trevor’s attention, and he caught the vampire smiling to himself as he quickly tore his gaze away from Trevor and Mary. Under the shade the parasol offered, it was difficult to catch the precise expression Alucard wore, but Trevor had seen enough just now.

It was livelier an expression than what Trevor caught on him most days, and although it was brittle and quick to fade, it was _something_.

It didn’t make him look so much like the ghosts from mother’s stories that Trevor still recalled vividly whenever the night was dark and his bed cold.

Perhaps there was hope for the vampire yet.

*

Mary was a rowdy girl, which was unsurprising for a young werewolf but meant that the time spent with her was bone-achingly exhausting. Trevor had _never_ felt as old as he did when he rubbed at his aching back after putting Mary to sleep for a night.

“God,” Trevor groaned, and as usual the word came out like a curse, as he stepped into the library Alucard inhabited at almost any given time, “I have never felt this _old_.”

Alucard didn’t lift his gaze from whichever one of his father’s notebooks he was shuffling through right then, but he did grunt to signal he had noticed Trevor. “Age tends to catch men quickly,” he murmured, “though I thought you still had some decades left in your brittle bones, Belmont.”

“Says the one with skin so thin it’s almost see-through.”

“Clever,” Alucard said, deceptively calm and collected as he raised his gaze. “Did you steal that one from Sypha?”

Something in the stare sent a shiver down Trevor’s spine, but he had never been the type to show it when someone got to him. (Sypha would have a field day with that statement.) Instead, he flashed a lazy smirk at the other and drawled, “You don’t think I come up with my own insults?”

Alucard’s voice trembled with contained laughter – long enough to be audible, short enough for Trevor to doubt himself and his ears. “You have the creativity of a savage drunk. My doubts are well-founded.”

Trevor wished he could say Alucard was wrong, but he really couldn’t after Sypha’s many recounts of his drunken ramblings.

Instead of arguing this point further, Trevor plopped down onto one of the fancy armchairs and eyed at Alucard seated at an equally fancy table. “When are you going to stop avoiding the kid like she’s made of the 14th century plague?”

“I’m not avoiding her like the plague. Following the usual hygienic procedures sadly do not keep her away like it does the black death.”

“You sassy bastard,” Trevor huffed, but his mouth threatened to curve into a smile. “Fine. Why are you avoiding her like she’s the deadliest piece of garlic you’ve ever met?”

Alucard’s gaze resettled onto the page he had been reading previously, but his shoulders tensed visibly. He flipped to another page before responding. “Werewolves leave even worse taste in my mouth than garlic.”

Trevor barked out a laugh at that. “No one’s told you to _eat_ them.”

“Do you _enjoy_ being difficult, or is it only with me that you grow so obstinate?” Alucard’s voice drawled the words with pretended boredom, but vague annoyance seeped into them despite that. Trevor smiled at his success and reveled in this small victory that Sypha would have called being petty as hell.

“Oh, you’re just a special case,” Trevor said and batted his eyelids in a mockery of seduction. “And I do very much enjoy it.”

Alucard gave a sound resembling a _tsk_ at that, but his shoulders eased off and he lifted his eyes to look at Trevor directly. When he spoke, his voice went dreadfully even, as if he were holding his emotions back. Flat, almost indifferent, but his eyes shone. “I was almost killed by one of them when I was a child. I remember only my father’s anger from the event, though.”

Alucard’s face darkened as he spoke, his eyebrows tugged into a frown, and Trevor was almost sorry he had made the vampire speak. Dracula remained a topic neither of them approached if they could help it. Even so, he made no effort to stop Alucard from speaking now that he had started.

“Mother was still alive, as well,” Alucard mused. “She was more sensible, dismissing father’s intent on having a bloody feud with the wolves. But that didn’t stop him, then.” Alucard’s eyes grew distant, and strands of curling blond hair slipped over his face. He didn’t bother tucking them behind his ear. “For someone that loathed intimacy and later even feelings themselves, he loved us above all else.”

Alucard remained silent for so long Trevor began to think that was the end of it, but Alucard parted his lips to speak again in a much drier voice, “It took many years, but the wolves got my mother in the end. And father… well, he made more enemies after that. More than I can count.”

Alucard’s words didn’t stutter even once through this short not-quite tale, but something in his face betrayed the unnatural calm in his voice. Trevor couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but the face Alucard wore radiated loneliness, a grief so deep human mind could barely comprehend it.

Some part of him ached. The same part that had been so eager to not let Alucard continue living gloomily all on his own. Trevor had never known what to make of this part of himself, so he had often elected to ignore it.

“It all spiraled out of control,” Alucard muttered, a touch of resentment rising into his voice. The slight crack in Alucard’s controlled calm startled Trevor: this was the closest he’d ever seen Alucard to crying. Alucard lowered his head again over the notebook on the table before him. “It all began with the wolves. I’d rather not deal with them anymore in my life.”

“She’s just a kid,” Trevor reminded him, because it was all he could do. “She’s got nothing to do with all that stuff.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Alucard said, but the anger was there to stay. Exposing the trauma that had gathered over the years much like the dust around the castle wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. Trevor knew it, and his fingers itched to grab a bottle of whisky just to have something to fiddle with.

“Even so,” Alucard continued when the silence had stretched on uncomfortably long, his words coming out as a hushed whisper that had Trevor straining his ears, “I cannot bring myself to do what you are expecting me to, Trevor.”

When Alucard stood to leave, Trevor was too stunned to stop the vampire brushing past him and his armchair.

This was the first time Alucard had ever deigned to call him by his first name.

*

That said, Alucard didn’t go out of his way to actively avoid the girl in the coming days and weeks when she was spending time with Trevor in the form of playing with him. Which might count more as _scratching_ him.

“I thought you were a were _wolf_ , not a were _cat_ ,” Trevor pointed out to her the thirteenth time her still untrimmed nails had dug into his calf. At least it wasn’t anywhere more sensitive. “Alucard, I’m starting to think I’m allergic.”

Alucard, seated at the gazebo right beside Trevor and Mary’s playground, didn’t appear to be paying much attention, but he replied nevertheless: “I believe that is wholly a _you_ problem.”

Mary, the little shit she was, only giggled and made another attempt at scratching the pant legs off of Trevor, or so it felt until Trevor managed to catch the girl into his arms and lift her high until she was screaming for a whole different reason. She was a tough little thing, but not quite tough enough to handle being tossed around like a flour sack without howling a little.

Even so, she was still smiling, and Trevor couldn’t help the surge of fondness that rushed through him.

He wasn’t great at being a role model, had never been. He still cursed around Mary more than Sypha would ever let him (while cursing herself, no doubt) if she were there with them. Mary had even begun mimicking him gleefully – the first time Mary had announced her presence with a loud _fuck_! a couple days previously had startled both him and Alucard – but Trevor couldn’t help but feel a sense of joy, even though he was clearly a bad influence on a still relatively young child.

Trevor found himself fond of this little devil child, much in the same way he was fond of Alucard – not _exactly_ the same, that would be fucking weird, but fond regardless.

When Trevor glanced to the gazebo, he found Alucard’s eyes glued to him and Mary, the gaze surprisingly contemplative and lacking in cautiousness and disgust the vampire had shown the first night they had had Mary. He still didn’t come near Mary of his own volition, but this was as good a starting point as any.

Especially when Mary, the crafty little thing, squirmed free from Trevor’s grasp and hopped down onto her feet before scrambling towards the gazebo. Trevor’s reflexes failed to act on time, and so Mary had soon curled up on the wooden floor of the gazebo, pressed lightly against Alucard’s legs that had suddenly stiffened as though he was the startled animal in this instance.

“What on Earth do you think you’re doing,” Alucard started in not quite a hiss, but he was interrupted by a contented sigh from the girl at his feet.

“Sleepy,” Mary murmured, yawning between the syllables, as she settled herself as comfortable as possible, much like a dog might. “And hot. And you’re cool, Allie.”

Alucard lifted his gaze from the top of the girl’s head towards Trevor, eyebrows lifted and eyes shining with a wordless accusation.

“The nickname wasn’t _my_ idea,” Trevor said and raised his hands defensively… until he smirked and wiggled his eyebrows at the vampire. “Unless you wanted it to be.”

Alucard’s eyes narrowed into a withering glare, but he didn’t move a muscle as the child curled at his feet and seemed to have settled in for a comfortable nap. The clouds covered the sun properly, but even so Alucard looked just as sickened as he did on a sunny day.

Or, Trevor corrected himself inwardly, _tired._ Alucard hadn’t slept through the daytime properly for what felt like months now and even more rarely did he sleep at night.

“Fetch me a blood bottle, Belmont,” Alucard finally hissed, annoyance prevalent, and Trevor retreated into the castle to do that but not without complaining about the castle lord’s lazy bum not getting the drinks himself. But really, it was a protest only for the sake of protesting, and Trevor found himself smiling to himself as ventured inside and going down to the cellar to pick up one of those bottles Alucard and Dracula had spent a long time hoarding.

The underground room had been conquered by spiders’ webs a while back, but Trevor bravely fought through the sticky and admittedly creepy feeling of it sticking to his skin. The bottles were about the same size as wine bottles, and Trevor suspected that’s what they had been used before they had ended up in the use of the Dracula family. A pity that.

When he re-emerged from the cellar, dusting off the web sticking to him, and after he returned outside, the sun was already peeking past the clouds. Someone was in for a nasty rash if they stayed in the gazebo for much longer. The thought somehow raised Trevor’s spirits even higher, and he was about to call out Alucard when he reached the age-worn gazebo and saw that Alucard’s eyes had slipped shut and his neck craned back over the back of the bench he sat on.

Trevor halted and observed the sleeping vampire for a bit. He had only rarely seen him doze off like this, and Alucard’s lack of breathing as he slept hadn’t stopped sending unsettling feelings into the pit of his stomach.

“Never stops freaking me out,” Trevor muttered as he quietly placed the bottle beside Alucard’s thigh and sat down himself, “the bastard.”

If his eyes stayed on Alucard’s pale face and lips a little too long until they trailed down to the kid sprawled on the floor at his feet, no one was there to call Trevor out on it.

Thank fuckin’ God.

*

Alucard still didn’t bring Dracula up in conversation any more often than he had thus far. Still, something had changed since the night he had opened up to Trevor, despite Alucard’s reluctance to admit such. For one thing, his shoulders no longer seemed _as_ heavy as before, and the slight smile that danced on his lips was a touch less sardonic and bitter whenever Trevor caught sight of it.

The weight of what had happened still remained, as one simply didn’t unload such a burden by throwing it all off at once, but it was an improvement all the same. Trevor felt like releasing a breath he’d been metaphorically holding in all this time.

It was as if the figurative mouse trap had gone off without any mice getting hurt and the cheese gone.

And when Trevor one night found Alucard reading for the werewolf girl scratching at his long, flowing shirt sleeve while lying on the much too large bed, it wasn’t as much of a shock as it would have been a little while ago. Alucard didn’t look up from the book’s pages, but he shifted to make room for Trevor on the edge of what now was Mary’s bed.

Mary’s sleepy eyes squinted when they caught sight of Trevor, and it was a look of pure content if Trevor had seen one. He flashed a grin at her, and the usually rowdy girl only smiled quietly back as she snuggled deeper into her blankets and let go of Alucard’s shirt.

“Go to sleep, wolfie,” Trevor said, “before Alucard gets thirsty and bites you.”

Mary snorted, as unafraid as she’d always been despite knowing about Alucard. It hadn’t stopped her from trying to get close to him. “I’ll just bite back if he does, Trev!”

“We are not spreading rabies in this household,” Alucard said, but his voice was much warmer than the lukewarm tone it usually took with Mary. Trevor’s eyebrows rose at it and he turned to look at Alucard, who returned the gaze evenly as if he were asking _what are you looking at_.

“Thought vampires couldn’t catch it,” Trevor shot back after that moment of stunned silence between the two of them passed.

“Doesn’t mean humans can’t,” Alucard said, voice damn near _demure_ , and looked away. “Don’t mistake it for concern, Belmont.”

“Wouldn’t have until you told me not to,” Trevor said, lowering his voice when he saw Mary’s eyelids drooping shut. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, though it was hard to say who the smile was for. “I’m quoting Sypha here, but you _do_ have cute qualities in you, Allie.”

“Call me that once more, and even garlic won’t save your dreams tonight.” What little venom Alucard’s voice had didn’t convince Trevor and certainly didn’t make his smile shrink any smaller. If anything, it only grew until Alucard huffed and looked away, and if Trevor didn’t know better, he would swear he’d seen Alucard pouting.

Mary’s soft snoring caught his attention away from the vampire, and Trevor turned his eyes to the snoozing girl curled under the thick blankets, her unruly hair like spread like halo around her head. Her lightly tanned skin didn’t hide the freckles dancing over her cheeks and nose, and not for the first time was Trevor struck by how endeared he was by this child.

“You know,” Trevor said, “I’d put up with any nasty nightmares just to see her smile like that.” He glanced at the vampire from the corner of his eye as he got up from the edge of the bed. “Wouldn’t mind seeing you smile more often, either. Not quite picture frame worthy, but it’s still a pretty nice smile.”

A yawn escaped him then and he waved his hand dismissively as he exited the room. “I’m gonna hit the hay, too. Don’t get all broody now that you’ve got no one supervising you.”

“Hmm. I make no such promises.”

Trevor found himself smiling more widely as he retreated into the room he had picked for himself and began undressing until he was in his usual sleepwear of barely anything covering him. Was it just him or had the bastard begun to develop a sense of humor when he hadn’t been looking?

*

Alucard went up to his father’s study after he heard Trevor’s breathing settle down into a loud snore matching the little girl’s. He had been in the room quite often following Dracula’s death, but only recently had it stopped feeling like he was consciously torturing himself by going up there to stare at the rather magnificent portrait of the man no longer in Alucard’s undead life.

Beside the portrait was another painting, a larger one that attempted to steal the focus from all the other art spread over the wall. Alucard had purposely been avoiding looking it the past months, but now he lifted his gaze and allowed his eyes trail over the soft color of his mother’s dress and the curve of her arms around the child he knew to be himself.

He exhaled forcibly to rid himself of the heavy feeling forming in his chest.

“Hello,” he murmured, and a faint warmth crawled up his face at the thought of Trevor finding him there speaking to a painting of his parents and himself as a mere babe. He might have gotten used to some of the teasing, but not the amount that would be sure to follow if the Belmont ever found out about this.

“I think…” The words echoed off the stone walls, and Alucard was at a loss how to continue for some seconds until he rediscovered his voice. “I might have found myself a way to be happy again, mother, father.”

“Eventually, at least,” he amended when the painted stares bore into him from the paintings around him, all of them evoking much vaguer sense of grief than before. His eyelids shut briefly to push away the guilt that followed: no, he would not let himself wallow as his father had, not anymore.

He thought of the warmth of a young girl pressing against the side of his calf and the smile of a man he used to see as nothing but a nuisance and a barbarian. The warmth swelling in his heart was stronger than the dark grief that had resided there for too long.

He hadn’t wished for hope, but it had come for him regardless, although in completely unexpected and unconventional forms.

Alucard found himself smiling softly up at the painted forms of his parents. “You needn’t watch over me, now. You can rest now. I can take it from here.”

Whether it was silly or not, saying these things to the painting he had stared up at for most of his life did ease the burden, did make the smile on his face less ill-fitting, and drove the ocean-deep sorrow to lighter waters.

Or, rather, this confirmed the change that had already taken place in him.

Fascinating what finding one’s place in a new family could do to someone. Alucard smiled wryly at the thought of Trevor being any part of his family, but it wasn’t an untrue sentiment.

But perhaps he would not admit that aloud quite yet. It was all but temporary, after all, for that child surely could not stay with them forever.

Yet, the feeling of _home_ wouldn’t go away in the coming days.


End file.
